SOUNDING SHORES 



165 



dark, forbidding, sepulchral with the sound of 

 the sea, 



"The nightmared ocean murmurs and yearns 

 Welters and swashes and tosses and turns 

 And the dreary black sea weed lolls and wags; 

 Only a moan through the black clefts blown 

 With sobs in the rifts where the coarse kelp shifts, 

 Falling and lifting, tossing and drifting, 

 And under all a deep dull roar 

 Dying and swelling forever more ." 



It is all so very different along the tropic 

 shores of the Pacific or the Atlantic, where fog 

 and mist are seldom seen and cold is never 

 known, where commerce has not defiled the 

 waters nor manufactures blackened the blue fir- 

 mament. On the coasts of Central America — 

 to go no further seaward — there are miles and 

 miles of beaches that have no name nor history 

 and have been trodden only by Indian feet. 

 Wonderful beaches they are, dazzling in light 

 and color ! All the glitter of the shore is theirs 

 — sands of quartz and coral flashing in their 

 whiteness, sands of peroxide of iron and flakes 

 of mica, mosaic sands with strata of carnelian, 

 obsidian, and agate. And here, too, is the shat- 

 tered and outworn life of the sea, shells of 

 pearl in countless numbers, ribbons and fronds 



Central 



American 



beaches. 



The i/litter 

 and niter 

 of the shore. 



